While publicly denying Russia’s accusation that the EU forced Ukraine choose between Russia and Europe, in private America’s top diplomat reportedly admitted this as fact and that it played a part in escalating the ongoing crisis.

“Some folks in Europe made mistakes, the association
agreement became too much of an East-West tug of war. It
shouldn’t have been,” US Secretary of State John Kerry
reportedly said at a private meeting of the Trilateral Commission
in Washington last Friday. His words were quoted by the Daily
Beast on Tuesday.

Russia has long insisted that the EU and the US sparked the
political crisis in Ukraine last October. The EU Association
Agreement, which President Viktor Yanukovich refused to sign
after long deliberation, would require Ukraine to sever or
downgrade many of its economic ties with Russia, which would hurt
greatly its economy. Yanukovich’s decision triggered the protest
in Kiev, which eventually escalated into an armed coup that
deposed him.

European and American officials rejected Russia’s view of the
ill-fated agreement, insisting it would not damage Ukraine’s
trade with Russia. But apparently in private conversation
American diplomats don’t follow the narrative.

The division between the US and the EU over Ukraine was
highlighted earlier in February after a recording of a phone
conversation between Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland
and American Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was leaked.

They were discussing the foreign effort to help anti-Yanukovich
opposition create what has now became the new Ukrainian
government and expressed frustration at EU’s hesitance on the
matter, culminated by the infamous “F**k the EU” exclamation from
Nuland.

Kerry’s private comment on the EU’s role in the crisis is just a
small part of the Daily Beast report. The majority was focused on
the alleged evidence that the US had of Russian agents acting in
Ukraine to stir up protest. While the website initially implied
that the evidence had been recorded by US intelligence, the State
Department later clarified that the reported remarks were related
to recordings produced by the Ukrainian government.

Kiev published a six-minute recording, which it said proved the
presence of Russian secret agents in Ukraine, two weeks ago. This
was one day after a disastrous attack on protester-held
Slavyansk, in which then-head of the Anti-Terrorist Center of the
Ukrainian Security Service was injured. However, the evidence was
far from conclusively damning for Russia.

Another package of evidence Ukraine produced so far, which the US
State Department endorsed, proved to be faulty. The alleged photo
evidence case quickly collapsed, with the New York Times, which
headlined it, having to publish a follow-up admitting its failure to properly verify it.

“Kerry has many times mentioned that Ukrainian intelligence
captured Russian agents,” he said. “So, show them to the
people, have them on TV. Kerry says they don’t want to disclose
the identities of those people who are engaged in the captures.
This is not serious.”